althaffe

Due to the nature of HN, once a post is out of the homepage it more or less falls into oblivion.

There had been a lot of good threads over the years, but It's hard for someone late to the party to unearth such gems.

Do you have any such threads bookmarked?

Google recently claimed they achieved Quantum supremacy and ran computations in 200s what the world's fastest supercomputer would take 10,000 years (even though IBM challenged the claims).

I'm curious how well current encryption algorithms can fare against a quantum computer, given the governments has the means to build or get their hands on one.

This is a broad category but I hope that's fine. Looking for mostly non-fiction recommendations, but mandatory fiction reads are welcome too.

The keywords here are 'fascinating' and 'stimulating'. I hope that gives you an idea. Hackers by Steven Levy, Fermat's theorem, Digital Gold, American Kingpin, 1984 etc fits the bill perfectly for me. As for anime/manga, Liar game and Death note were the unbeatable.

'Godel, Escher, Bach' is on my list, but can't decide on Neal Stephenson's books due to the mixed reviews.

So which books fascinated you the most?

I've found it very difficult to resist the temptation to surf endlessly through Youtube videos or watch Netflix, after long hours of coding at work which kinda drains all your willpower.

This prevents me from working on my side-projects or spending time learning something worthwhile after work. How do you find the motivation to work on stuff that matters, even if you are craving for some mindless entertainment?